An absolute tragedy has been developing for some retired Thoroughbreds lately. Thoroughbred Retirement Foundation, which has about 1,200 horses in its care, scattered at many different foster farms, has allegedly not been paying the foster farms for the horses care. In turn, some of the foster farms such as 4-H Farm is Oklahoma began starving the horses, and many are missing. We hope and pray that the horses will find the retirement that they actually deserve, and that those responsible for bringing such misery upon them will find justice quickly. This kind of situation reaffirms why we do not have a foster program, it can just spin out of control too quickly, leading to horses suffering. The New York Times did a great article on the starving Thoroughbreds, to read it, click here.
Sunday our staff arrived at the shelter to find things blown to bits and pieces from the wind storm that ravished the area Saturday night. This is the upside down roof to the stallion pen, a well built extremely heavy duty structure.
The solid steel and wood panels to the stallion pen were twisted like matchsticks. Thankfully, absolutely no animals were hurt!
Lake Oroville, which has been down at drought levels for years, is dumping water out of the spillway now with all the rain.
It is so amazing to see all the water, it reminds us westerners of Niagara Falls. It’s a lot of water!
At the new facility, with all the extra water that comes from the well, the need for the water truck vanished. Jason took some pictures and posted it on Craigslist for more than was paid for the truck, hoping for the best. Sure enough, soon enough some guys were out looking at it, happy as can be to be buying such a wonderful rig.
Soon it was up on their trailer and $500 was in the hay fund. It has been an adventure having the rig, it sure kept the horses happy with water in the summer of 09.
Tuesday morning crates were being stacked by the trailer at the shelter. Parcy wasn’t sure what was going on, but no doubt he was hoping that little cows would be coming back in them.
Jason loaded the crates into the back of the freshly cleaned trailer.
Jason and Tawnee then hit the road.
After a short drive they arrived at Animal Place in Grass Valley. They have a beautiful 600 acre facility where animals of all sizes shapes species and breeds can live. They had been involved in rescuing roosters from a horrific hoarding case, and were having trouble finding them homes. They wanted us to take some into our shelter to hopefully have better success at finding them wonderful homes.
Two of the Animal Place workers would catch the roosters in the rooster roost…
…while Tawnee would gently secure them in the crates. In the end we brought 9 lovely roosters into our organization.
The hoarding case the roosters came from was on the Animal Planet show, “Confessions: Animal Hoarding.” You can watch a clip from the show by clicking here.
It looks like there is just more and more rain in the forecast. Once again the shelter will be closed due to rain this Sunday, even if the sun does peek out Sunday, vehicles cannot drive onto the property because of the mud, so the shelter is closed this Sunday.
Many thanks to Trudi R., Donna A., and Gail G. for their very generous donations! It is greatly appreciated.